


In a Deep Dark Wood

by SaltBud (Culttherapy)



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2020-11-24 19:30:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20912915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Culttherapy/pseuds/SaltBud
Summary: Olivia doesn't return after she's ordered to take a long weekend off and the relationships of her team begin to shatter. When she reappears will they be able to fix her and themselves, or will the 16th precinct be irrevocably changed? Centers on Olivia, eventually AO. No particular timeline, but let's say sometime before Alex enters Witness Protection.





	1. Blue

The last light of day filtered down between the leaves, igniting on tiny droplets as they hurtled towards earth. Her palm throbbed, the scrape that marred it long but not deep enough to warrant stitches. It had been created when her boot slipped from it’s grip on a rain-soaked rock during her decent. Her left hand had flailed for rock and her right had caught the gnarled root of a black spruce, tearing open. Olivia had been hiking for days, this her third and final and it had begun to pour around 10am. She had packed with the expectation of the rain, but hadn’t made the time she’d hoped to, the weather slowing her progress. The hike was one she knew well, an out and back of approximately 30 miles winding up, around, and back down the peak of Mount Harper in upstate New York. The trip was about an hour or so north of the city, and as a uniform she had done it several times, always on her own, and always in three days over a long holiday weekend. She had chosen it again when Cragen had threatened her with dismissal if he saw her anywhere near the 16th precinct from that Saturday to Monday. She knew of course the threat was an empty one but she had taken the bait and decided to revisit her old trekking ground. 

To her chagrin she knew the distance had taken longer to tackle, not only due to the rain, but because she was rusty. She hadn’t hiked more than 18 miles in years, and had foolishly thought the ability would come back easily to her despite the misuse. Now as she neared the end of the downhill portion of the trail her course would begin to run parallel to a river that ambled around the mountain, easy and flat from here on out. The river’s water would be running quick and brimming, full of rain run-off, and she would follow the sound of it, deep in the woods beside her, for the final seven miles. At the end she would emerge from the woods, back at the small gravel parking lot she’d begun at on Saturday. 

At her wrist a small pulse pressed against her, a chirp accompanying it. The Garmen told her she had hiked the 23 miles as expected, and that the afternoon had crawled into evening. 6pm. She would be covering the final miles in the dark. Stretching her sore, un-bandaged hand she walked on, her feet sloshing through the slick leaves as raindrops tapped heavily onto the trees that tunneled around the trail. Soon the exhale of moving water joined the chorus and her bladder began to protest at the sound.

In the past on good weather hikes she would stop beside the river, walking the eight minutes or so off trail to its edge to rest. As her bladder persisted she knew it would also make for a private place to relieve herself before moving on. It would only take a few minutes, and she had hiked out of trails in the dark before, a headlamp a given part of her camping gear. She was already soaked to the bone, resting a minute or two near the river wouldn’t hurt. 

Cutting right off of the trail she followed the hushed whir of the rushing water until she stood at the lip of the over-filled riverbed. The water looked muddied and angry, rambling past and skipping over sunken stones to create a boiling film of white nearest the shore. Bending she dipped her uninjured hand into its surface. It felt colder than the air but inseparable from the feel of the rain on her skin. Both sang of the winter to come. When she righted her knees cracked audibly. The woods surrounding the gash of the river on the side where she stood were sparse, trees set further apart then rejoining into a thicket as they moved back towards the trail. It reminded her of a bandshell, erected to face the water and made of pine and spruce. On the opposite bank trees ran to the mouth of the water, meeting the flow, their roots exposed in silt and licked by the eruptions of whitecaps.

She stared for a moment, slowly removing her sodden pack from her shoulders, the spongey feel of wet fabric against skin cooling as the heat born between her body and the pack disappeared. Somewhere behind her a loud crack called out from the forest nearer the trail. With the heavy storm branches had been snapping all over the forest. The weight of her bag gone she shrugged stiffly, rolling out her shoulders, pops resounding deep in her back as though to call a response to the snap in the trees. She reached for her fly.

Another loud burst exploded, this time closer behind her and accompanied by a low, gravely hum. Downed branches didn’t hum. Something hurtled at her through the forest. Just as the 4x4 came into view she took hold of her backpack, moving out of instinct to shield herself behind a cluster of trunks at the water’s edge. A man in his late thirties, lean with long dirty blond hair wrapped into a pony tail straddled the vehicle, his once white t-shirt stained dark with brown and black. He wore khakis, the knees of which looked hardened with mud, the patches like two black holes in the middle of his legs. Something blue bounced on the back of the four wheeler, tied there with several loops of nylon cord and as he circled the clearing a length of auburn curls swung from one end of what she realized was a tarp. Olivia’s stomach dropped. 

Pulling the 4x4 to a stop closest to where the trees began to thicken the man hopped from it and clapped his hands loudly against his thighs, wiping the moisture from them. He had a gun holstered at his side. He moved to the tarp, neon in the dusk light, and slowly unwound the rope encircling it. The sound of droplets berating the plastic rose thunderously. It was as though all other sound disappeared, the river miles away, nothing breathing in the woods but them, the only rushing sound Olivia’s blood in her ears. The tarp unfurled in a flourish of blue and skin and detritus and almost as though she had appeared out of thin air a woman suddenly lay, sprawled and nude, on the rotting bed of leaves. 

At first Olivia thought the woman must have been dragged through the mud that splotched the man’s clothing, the same dark brown encasing her pale body. It took a moment to reconcile that the muck was actually a mixture of dried and drying blood and deep, ferocious bruises. She held her own breath as she watched the woman’s chest for any sign of rise or fall. It seemed the body lying prone on the ground was dead, unmoving until like a gunshot a cough breached the air. Somewhere deep in the timber a bird was sent flying into the darkening sky. 

The man’s laughter came next, a crackling in his chest. It made Liv’s stomach turn. Now the woman’s chest heaved, ribs pressed under her skin as though under melting plastic. Another cough sprung form her and she gasped loudly. Panic surged through Olivia. She needed to do something, to respond, but she was unarmed save for a can of bear spray. Her nerves tingled, heightened with indecision. No part of her could settle with standing by. Years of training told her to try to mediate the situation, to step in, despite the danger it might mean for her. Slowly she unlatched the small can of bear spray at her waist, eyes locked on the man while he squatted beside the woman. Olivia took a step out from behind the knot of trees. He bent to the woman’s ear, patting her gently on the shoulder as his jaw worked. He was speaking to her. Another step out into the open.

Swiftly he stood to full height again. Time warped and decelerated and Olivia’s legs started moving before she could consciously tell them to do so. In shocking definition his hand moved to unclip the safety of the holster, the gun suddenly a dark and heavy mass in his hands. The sound of the rain stopped, colors blurred around them. Olivia’s mouth dried instantly, lips sticking to her teeth in a snarl as a bark gurgled deep in her throat. His long finger wrapped around the trigger and depressed, and in an instant that felt everlasting a bullet tore through skin and bone and brain. The world tilted and Olivia’s knees buckled. 

She hadn’t made it far from the water and thanked God for the patter of rain as it returned to her. He still hadn’t seen her, hadn’t heard her grunt over the sound of the gun firing, hadn’t heard her fall to the ground. Into the deafening silence after the ring of the shot her breath grew, her chest pressing repeatedly into the underbrush. If she could make it back to her pack she could try to call for back up, could disappear into the woods and come back later with reinforcements to find the woman’s body. Olivia scanned the man’s face, trying to memorize his features, his sharp nose, the widow’s peak of his blonde hair, the angular jaw and broad shoulders. He was more muscular than she’d first read him as, lean but all power. She stared until knew she would be able to accurately describe him when she went for help.

He returned to the 4x4, unclipping a shovel that had rested beneath the woman, beneath the tarp. Her stomach scraped the rough ground and she belly crawled backward, her eyes dragging to the woman on the forest floor. She was young, though it was hard to tell behind the muck and blood. Her body looked soft. A jolt of anger tore through Olivia. 

Abruptly she felt the bulk of her pack, the brush of bark against the sole of her boot. She was back where she had begun. The bear spray still in hand she lifted herself onto hand and knee. The man stood now with his back to her, refolding the tarp in his arms, the crunch of it reverberating around them, the gun re-holstered. She kept her eyes glued to the lines of his shoulders, the transparency of his white shirt as she rose. Her hand floated into the air behind her, unwilling to turn her back on him she reached for the tree trunk beside her, feet sliding through the leavings beneath her. At her back the stream hissed as it lapped at the shoreline, close enough for her to touch. The trees and the corner of her bag skirted her vision.

When she bent for her pack the heel of her boot caught against something stiff and hidden. A root buried beneath the quilt of fallen leaves. Her weight shifted, hips cocked into an unstable squat and she tumbled, arms flailing to catch herself, heart fluttering in her chest. For a moment she thought she could hold still, could remain standing. She didn’t realize how wrong she was. As though in anticipation of what was to come next her body felt pained before she ever hit the ground, terror and hope commingling in her blood and sending sparks through her. Her trunk landed silently, her right hand soft against the earth. Her left met the river, splashed like a rock tossed into still water. Loud. The man was already facing her before she could right her gaze on him. 

His face was red, the cords of his neck like rods of steel behind flesh. He charged her and she backpedalled, crab walking straight into the chilly water. His hands fumbled with the holster release and he brought the gun to eye level as he reached the shore. The water around her deepened and she found it difficult to grip the slick rocks submerged with her. The bear mace slipped from her grip and tumbled downstream. He squared up to aim and she automatically raised her right hand, her voice calling out above the din of water and blood in her ears. She felt her throat release pressure and her voice fly from her. She blocked her own face with her palm, as if it would prevent a bullet from driving into her skull and watched as his lips moved through splayed fingers. She couldn’t hear a thing he said, could only bare the scratch on her palm to him as she floundered in the water.

With a deafening burst the scratch was obliterated, first the dull wet smack of the bullet hitting flesh then the whiz of it slicing through the air. Something near her ear burned and the smell of it hit her as a flash of hair spun into the space beside her, landing in the hurried river. The strands wriggled like thin snakes in the flow of water. The bullet wound in her hand was through and through, the pain of it consumed by the adrenaline coursing through her. The deadly metal had skated by her right ear, close enough to cut strands of hair, the smell of the burnt locks close to her cheek. 

She looked up and he was shockingly close to her, up to his knees in the river. Finally, the pain came. A scream tore from her and she once again tried helplessly to scuttle away, thrusting her decimated hand into the wash, desperate for traction. She could see now that his eyes were blue. They reminded her of Elliot’s. Foam hurtled upward around the force of his legs as he pushed closer. Bending down and grabbing hold of her ankle he yanked hard. Her balance was shot, her weight tilting backward and forcing her head to submerge. Before she could rise again he pulled the ankle he clutched forward, her form floating just below the surface weightless and her head ricocheting off of a river rock as her body lurched towards him. He was on her instantly, knees holding her hips in place, fingers wrapping around her throat. She hadn’t been able to get air since she’d submerged. 

His face looked blurred from beneath the stream, like staring up through misshapen glass. She could see her own hands reaching to claw at his arms, could see them wrap around his jaw. Diluted red ran in arches down her right wrist, and where she clawed at him it smeared across the stubble on his cheeks. Soon black began to populate her vision, to darken the view of his bared teeth and she felt as though she were being tugged ever downward. Her hands started to slip, to lose grip and waiver. They were beside her under the water once more despite her commands to scratch, to tear. She could feel her eyelids disobeying her as well, her thoughts loosening and fogging. If she could only close her eyes for a moment she could have her strength back. 

A few bubbles tickled against the roof of her mouth and escaped her lips as a final, squelched sigh. She knew suddenly that she would die.


	2. Tan

He had asked Fin to cover her apartment this time, his stomach too churned, his heart too broken to go back into the space that was so indelibly hers. Instead he stood in the woods, alone, freezing. They had found Olivia’s rental car eight days ago, locked and abandoned in the car park at the trail head, all of her gear gone but her gun and badge locked inside the glove box. There was no trace of her except for her trail name signed into the log books at the beginning of the trail and at it’s peak. Alexandra Cabot had recognized it in name and Elliot had recognized Olivia’s chicken scratch. ‘Fearless.’ 

Thank God for Cabot. She and Olivia had grown close and the night before Olivia had taken off for the long weekend they had met for dinner. At the time Olivia had mentioned her weekend plans and the conversation had led to what a trail name was and how she was dubbed with hers. Turns out she had won it when she’d nearly dove off the side of a steep drop-off to help a boy who’d followed his more-agile-than-him dog down the bluff and broken his leg along the way. Instead of waiting for the rescue team she’d sprained her own ankle and bruised some ribs so she could comfort the kid while they waited. Alex said Olivia had delivered the story nonchalantly, as though it were the logical thing to do. They both agreed the name suited her. 

Standing in the dawn lit woods he could see her in his minds eye, her lithe from disappearing between branches and in the fog of his breath. Eight days earlier she had been here, had possibly been where he stood, just off the trail, a squat statue in the cathedral of trees. He could hear her breath, hear her feet in the leaves, smell her shampoo. He jumped, skin crawling as a hand clasped down hard onto his left shoulder from behind and for a moment he thought he saw the shadow of her long fingers on his tan jacket. 

“You Stabler?” A gruff, cigarette-aged voice barked out from behind a silvery mustache. He recognized the uniform, the captain of the handful of New York State troopers who had quickly taken hold of the case. His name was Raymond Odessa. He held a steaming paper cup of coffee, it’s lid gone, tendrils of vapor growing from its mouth. Elliot offered his frigid hand from his pocket with a curt nod. As though on cue the woods began to crawl, to shift and dance and grow.

Slowly peeling from between the trees tens of people, hands spread between them to measure distance, emerged from the growth. Tan uniforms and blue jeans, volunteers and those paid to be there materializing into the flat of the trail. A round of searchers had been taking shifts from sun up to sun down since they’d found her vehicle. They could only afford the search for one more day before it would have to be a strictly volunteer force. The first few days they had seen dogs and their masters, the former with their noses buried into Liv’s favorite sweatshirt before diving in useless paths through the trees. One of the trainers had mentioned something about the rain over the weekend. They’d come up with nothing. Next had come the cadaver dogs. 

They walked now at the head of the line, tails down and twitching every so often, weaving in and out of the tree line over the captains shoulder. 

Elliot realized the man had been talking to him. 

“What I’m trying to say detective is I don’t think she’s here. Our SR’s haven’t found anything substantial and at this point it may be too late, you know, 48 hours and all...” as Elliot tore his eyes back to the man before him a yip sounded in the distance. 

Rage boiled up in Elliot and he could feel his face flushing. This wasn’t some fucking CSI show, this was his partner, his best friend missing and he would stop at nothing to find her. Any bit of her. The thought stung. He knew the chances of her being alive were slim if she’d run into their usual kind of trouble, but she wasn’t a civilian, had been trained to deal with a tough situation. However she wasn’t an avid hiker, she wasn’t a survivalist. If what had gotten her wasn’t human, was the nature surrounding them or whatever creatures lived in it, he didn’t know what hope he could hold. 

Another yip sounded then a rustle as the front line of searches stopped, a loud grunt sounding from the dog handler as a signal to pause. He looked over the captains shoulder as a wisp of fur and a red jacket disappeared into the tree line. 

“You don’t know Olivia.” He could feel his jaw tensing, his teeth grinding out against her name. The man reached out and put a hand on his taught shoulder, squeezed it once, twice. Elliot visualized how easy it would be to break the appendage. How the man’s face would hue, how his eyes would water. Instead he only nodded, jaw clenched. 

“Your guys find anything at all?” He paused. “Even if it’s not substantial.” He shrugged the older man’s hand off. Odessa took it well, wiping his hand once on his slacks then sliding it back into his coat pocket. 

“Well, yesterday we turned up a ladies jacket about three miles back but it doesn’t match the description Ms. Cabot gave us. Bagged it anyway. Didn’t get a hit on it from the dogs.” He checked a silver watch wrapped too tightly around his meaty wrist. 

“Got maybe ten more hours of sunlight and we’ll have to call it for the search. We’re just over six miles out, we should be able to cover that in a day, but the lines gotta move slow. I had a tech suggest we get some divers out for the river, but my guess is that anything been in that rivers been swept away by now.”

His temper flared again, like an itch behind the eyes. This round, sweaty old man irritated him, the idea that he and his team were doing the very minimum, or so it seemed to Elliot, to simply get their jobs done and get out of there. Elliot had always believed a cop was a cop, didn’t matter homicide, beat or narcotics, SVU, all bore the badge, all were a team, but these idiots were a whole new breed. 

His fingers curled in his pockets, his molars grinding, struggling to rein in his anger when a chirp sounded from the breast of his jacket. Pulling out the phone he flipped it open, extending the antenna before answering. Relief washed over him, happy to be able to snap into the phone instead of at Odessa, who he watched trudge back down towards the trail, the line of searchers stilled as they had been when the cadaver dog had disappeared into the brush. 

“Stabler.” 

“Weh.......und....arpt....ove....”

The phone crackled at him, service lost in the nets of tall pine. He took several rushed steps in a circle, then towards the trail. 

“Hello?”

“Fin...I’m.....Liv...” 

Now he jogged, keys rattling in his pocket, gun heavy and bouncing at his waist. The nearer to the trail the better the service got and finally he recognized Fin’s voice. 

“Fin, you’re breaking up, wait one sec.” his feet met the trail and he took it, running yards away from the wall of searchers as he heard Odessa’s booming call from somewhere in the woods to his right. Had he been facing the line of people to his back he would have seen them suddenly break ranks and how instantly the uniforms had parted from the civilians, how half of those uniforms had started quickly disappearing into the woods towards Odessa’s voice. How the other half began briefing the volunteers, began forming a barrier at the right side of the trail to keep anyone from entering. 

“I’m at Olivia’s apartment....Liv’s been...” 

Elliot stopped and backed up a yard, then two. Suddenly Fin was clear as a bell. 

“-get that Elliot? I’m at Liv’s apartment. Looks like she’s been back. Maybe last night.” 

His heart thundered in his ears, lungs filling deep and hard with breath. This time the anger surprised him. His anger towards her. Was she back? Didn’t she know how hard they were looking for her, how desperately. 

“How do you know?”

“There’s some clothing missing, a bag. Stuffs been moved. Someone’s definitely been in here and it looks like it could have been Liv.” 

“Fin, there has to be more than that, what about the uniform in her building? What abou-“ he could hear his name echoing through the trees. Turning he caught sight of Odessa, standing like a white gash at the edge of the trail. His ruddy cheeks and nose stood out like traffic lights on his ghostly face. 

“Listen Fin, I gotta go. I’ll be back...” he checked his watch. “I’ll be back at the one-six around 6 tonight. Fill me in then.” He didn’t wait for Fin to finish before snapping the phone shut again and stuffing it back into his pocket. Ahead of him Odessa turned and started back into the tree line, his voice exploding out again. 

“We’ve got bodies.” 

It coerced Elliot into a run, his feet pounding against the hard, soon-to-freeze earth, each step jolting his body as though he’d just been plugged into a socket. Soon he was bumbling over fallen branches, over molted leaves, following the shape of Odessa back into the brush. To his left the sound changed, the wind no longer whipping through trunks and leaves but through a clearing he could just see through the trees. Water rushed up, louder as he drove deeper, a hum that had been background noise to him earlier now recognizable as flowing water. Tan uniforms shifted between darker tan and brown tree trunks, eruptions of orange and yellow and red above their heads like fireworks. As he caught up to Odessa, who had stopped beside a small circle of trees, the terra lessening and growing further apart as they approached the water, he could see one uniform crouched, his Smokey-The-Bear wide-brimmed hat tilted over his face as he examined the ground. Like a seashell, a rounded, ridged scallop of fingers sat pale and domed on the ground, barely exposed from the dusty earth. A ring glinted from the ring finger. 

Not Olivia. 

His breath hitched none the less. Odessa had said ‘bodies’. 

Odessa, following his train of thought finally piped up. 

“Cadaver dog hit here, and there, and there, and there.” With every ‘there’ the captain’s meaty finger pointed to a different outcrop of officers, each standing together like breathing grave markers. “Surprised we got a hit that fast, but looks like this one wasn’t buried very deep, maybe a rush job. Hand was just sitting here when we came up.” He scratched his chin, the sound of skin on stubble prickly in the air. Elliot tried to catch his breath. 

“Of course we’ll have to wait for the techs to get out here but...” his knees cracked so loud Elliot couldnt imagine the man straightening back up from his squat. The older man gestured to the thin fingers peeking from the dirt. “If this is any indication, I’d say we’ve got ourselves a dump site.” 

———————

By the time he left to get back to the city they had begun exhuming the third body. The first had been the fingers, a young woman with a mop of curly red hair, and not buried long. The second had been nothing more than a skeleton, glowing bright white in the high powered lamps, growing out of the earth in long stretches of bone. They had set up the lights just after midday as more techs had arrived. Drenched in gauzy blue gowns and booties they looked like aliens in the woods. They would have to call a forensic anthropologist to identify the skeletal remains, all of the teeth missing from the deep gap where jaw met skull. The first victim’s teeth had also been pulled. Enough of her features were intact, her face greying but pristine as though in sleep when they’d uncovered it. They could get a facial or finger print ID from her. 

He thought about the person that would be the one to do it, the mother or sister or partner of the young girl, staring into the thin sheet of her face, printed high gloss and handed to them to consider. 

He imagined having to do that with Liv.

A whistle sounded as he entered the precinct, drawing his eyes to a very tired looking Fin, his eyebrows raised, chin pointed towards his partner. “I thought you said 6 man.”

Munch turned to watch Elliot enter, a shock of blonde revealed behind his greying head as ADA Cabot came into view. He glanced down at his wrist, then shrugged. Elliot was two hours later than he’d anticipated. When he met Alex’s eyes her hollow cheeks pinked, her dark glasses dipped into blush. 

“Cabot, didn’t expect you to be here.” Her mouth opened as though to speak, then shut hard, her jaw muscles pulsing as she ground her teeth into each other. 

He stared hard at her, trying to read the grim expression that darkened her features. 

“Yeah, ADA Cabot has been showing up where we didn’t expect her to be all day.” Munch deadpanned, tapping the eraser end of his pencil with three brusque pops. Alex got impossibly redder.


	3. Red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Y'all, Im so sorry it took so long for me to get this up, I am working through this fic (and life) and I intend to see this fic to the end, it may just be a slow roll, so please be patient with me. This is a short one but I'll have more soon!

Her fingers were shaking, the delicate flutters of moth wings as they’re drawn to death in a pristine halo of light. Alex Cabot was not one to balk, to shrink and be bossed or fussed about. But she had done something irrevocably damning, undeniably stupid and she would have to eat it. 

Below the shame, the anxiety, was a boiling, seething anger, like a putrid oil low in her belly. Her pride would not hush and the bite of it aimed at the men around her. 

Towers of men and suddenly she didn’t feel her height. Olivia’s men, her partners and friends and the rage that spilled from them like blood. She wondered briefly whether or not, were she to still and will herself to disappear, she could vanish. 

“What the fuck were you thinking Cabot?” No such luck. Elliot’s voice boomed around the 180 square feet of her death trap. She stood, tweed blazer hung limply over her wrist, fingers flitting, in front of Don Cragen’s heavy old desk. The man himself leaned before her, one hip cocked up on to the dark wood. Fin lingered somewhere behind her, more a presence than sound, and Elliot hovered loudest and closest at her side. 

“I didn’t _think_ Elliot, if I had we wouldn’t be in the position.” She couldn’t meet his gaze and met Cragen’s instead. The sad, sympathetic look he provided her, the vision of a disappointed father that he saved for his favorite detectives, struck her. A flash of anger nearly quelled the honor of it being bestowed upon her.

“_We_ are not in this position Cabot, _you_ are.” Impossibly, Elliot’s voice was closer. 

“Why don’t you sit down Alex.” Don toed the wooden chair already pulled out beside her, the screech of its feet on the linoleum a sudden yelp. 

Slowly she descended, the hard edges of the chair prodding her like taunting fingers. She knew suddenly what it was like to be stuck in an interrogation room, detectives looming and playing with a suspect like a trapped mouse. 

As she sat Cragen looked almost to wilt, the tension viscerally forced from his body in a mimicry of relaxation. When he spoke his voice dripped in the illusion of patience, of a tenderness built to mask irritation. 

“Tell us again what happened Alex. One more time.” She could see his fingers working in the pockets of his trousers, doubtlessly picking at the skin of his thumbs; a habit she had observed in her brief time in the Captain’s company. Absently behind her a clock ticked, or was it Fin clicking his tongue.

“I went over to see if there was anything I…I don’t know, I’ve told you all of this. I made a mistake. I know I did, to drag me through it over and over again only serves to humiliate me more than I already have myself.” Why had she gone over? In case Olivia had suddenly returned? Because she had so desperately felt the need to hold, to touch a friend-quickly-becoming-best-friend’s things because it was all she had of her, and that made her feel insane? Because she was beginning to realize that perhaps what she felt for Olivia was not what was normal to feel for a best friend? Stupid, stupid. She shook the thoughts around her mind, willing the words to change like the bauble in a magic eight ball. 

“How did you get past the uniform?” Elliot had stopped pacing beside her to crouch and bring himself to her eye level. Exasperated she raised her hands in a mock surrender, the dull slap of them resounding as she willed them back down. She could feel the white of Elliot’s teeth beside her as his mouth twisted into a grimace. 

“I told you Stabler,” She gnashed her own teeth and turned to face him, their noses nearly brushing he was so near. His features were ensconced in red, the rage blistering, threatening to rupture the skin of his cheeks. She held his gaze, unflinching. 

“He wasn’t even in the building when I got there. What if she had…” She turned back to Cragen, pleading with an empty, open mouth. His fingers twitched harder in his pockets. He followed her eyes to them and quickly crossed his arms over his chest.

Slowly she folded her hands into her lap, eyes dropping to the nest of white-as-bone appendages, jaw snapping shut, then ajar once more. Her voice sounded like tissue paper unfolding. “He should be fired.” 

Elliot’s open palm smacked off the back of her chair and she jumped at the force of it, shrinking once more against the men in the room and her own shame. 

“You!” Elliot’s voice barked, his rough finger pointed like a firearm at her as he circled the chair, a vulture rounding a corpse it means to consume. “_You_ should be fired Cabot.”

Her head snapped up at the words, lips poised to spew venom at the detective, the chair screeching across the floor with a keening wail as she surged to full height. 

“Enough! You.” Cragen pointed in turn, his hand and words directed at Elliot. 

“Elliot, go home. We don’t need you here for this, and it’s been a damn long day.” His demeanor softened as his voice went on, like air let slowly from a deflating balloon. “Go home.” 

His pause reeked of finality and like a child scorned Elliot took up his jacket, crossed his arms about his thick chest and with a final blood-boiling glance at Cabot, he banged from the office. Fin rose with the echo of the slammed door and nodded to Cragen before curving a gentle hand over Alex’s shoulder and squeezing kindly. She tipped her chin toward the appendage, and he was gone. 

When her azure eyes met Cragen’s she felt finally as though on an even playing field. He stared at her, silent for a long time, a gentle quality about him as he tried to understand her. Finally he tilted upward and made his way around the desk, settling into the cushioned chair with a sigh as the air evacuated the seat. She remained standing, fists clenched at her sides. 

“This is out of character for you Alex, but I get it, I do. That doesn’t mean we can ignore what happened. I have to report this to the ADA’s office.” She nodded, but the tips of her fingers and the edge of her lips began to hum with an encroaching numbness. His gaze didn’t waver and she could see his jaw working, see his teeth bite into the side of his tongue. “I have to recommend your suspension and submit a formal review, and pending…” 

It felt like she was being bombarded with pinpricks of ice, suddenly caught in a storm that made her dizzy and terrified. She had known this was coming, but the finality of it, the actualization of the consequences of her actions tore at her.

“This may be the end of your career Alex. I need you to understand that.”

Her chin bobbed as she acknowledged him, her body reacting as her mind struggled to wrap itself around the idea, the depth of her mistake, of her absurdity. She broke their gaze and stared down at the fidgeting knot of her hands. 

“I wasn’t thinking, I just, I’m so worried.”

“Tell me again what you took Alex.”

A breath that felt like a match igniting in her chest filled her with air and hopelessness. 

“I uh…a pair of her pajamas…a sweatshirt and some shorts, I think…and uh…” Abruptly her head jerked upward, cheeks hot with embarrassment and anguish, a single, diamond-glistening tear rolling over the seal of her eye. “She can’t be dead Don, she can’t.”

He leveled his gaze on her, a sudden, honest companionship and knowing growing from him like wild flowers.

”Now tell me why this actually happened Alex.”


End file.
